Sten

by Chris Bunch

  He put the book down, and stopped. Ruffled Sten's hair.

  "You're a poor sorry bastard, and it's a shame things have worked the way they did. The least I can do is get you off this hellworld and let you be alive awhile longer."

  He tabbed the communicator switch.

  "Lieutenant. In my office. A new recruit for the Guard, Seems to have fainted when he realized the awful majesty of it all."

  Mahoney took a bottle of synthalk from his desk and without bothering with a glass, poured a long drink down nis throat.

  "With the wind at your back, lad."

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  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thoresen was wading in excuses and assurances fromthe chief of security. The more he looked at the man's vid-screen image, the more he wanted to smash his earnest face. “No real harm done,” the man said. How could he know?

  Thoresen didn't really give a damn about the damage to his quarters or the charred bodies of the patrolmen. But what about Bravo Project? He had recovered the file. But he'd be a fool not to act on the assumption that someone had seen enough of the file to be dangerous.

  Thoresen's head snapped up as he caught something in the drone from his chief of security.

  "What did you say?"

  "We have recovered the bodies of thirteen Delinqs and full identities have been made."

  "Not that. After."

  "Uh, one, possibly two of them escaped."

  So. He was right to worry.

  "Who were they?"

  "Well, sir,” the chief said, “we recovered a hair particle in your quarters. A chromosome projection estimates the man would have been—"

  "Let me see for myself,” the Baron snapped.

  A computer image began to build on the screen as the chromoanalysis built the image of a man cell by cell. Finally, there was a complete three-dimensional figure. It was Sten. Thoresen studied the image carefully, then shook his head. He didn't recognize the suspect. “Who is he?"

  "A Mig named Karl Sten, sir. Reported missing in that Exotic Section explosion some cycles—"

  "You mean the man responsible for that debacle is alive? How could he possibly—oh, never mind. That's all."

  "But, sir, there's more infor—"

  "I'll go over the report myself. Now. That's all!” The Baron scrolled the report that was Sten's life. It didn't take him long. There wasn't much to it, really, if you separated out all the legal and psych trash.

  Suddenly, the connection was made. The Bravo Project. Sten was an orphan of Recreational Area 26. The Row had come back to haunt him.

  He palmed the console board and the startled face of the chief leaped on the screen.

  "I want this man found. Immediately. I want every person available on this."

  "Uh, I'm afraid that's impossible, sir."

  "Why is that?” Thoresen hissed.

  "Well, we—uh ... have located him. He's on an Imperial troop ship, bound for—"

  Thoresen blanked the man out. It was impossible. How could—? Then he pulled himself together. He'd find this Sten. And then...

  A few moments later the Baron was talking quietly to a little gray man on a little gray world. The hunt for Sten had begun.

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  BOOK THREE

  THE GUARD

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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nuclear fires bloomed up from the planet, silhouetting the warships hanging just out of the atmosphere."H minus fifty seconds and counting. Red One, Red Two detached to individual control. Begin entry maneuvers.” The command ship's transmission crackled in the assault ship's control chambers.

  Controls went live, and the fleet transports swung in from their orbital stations. Braking rockets flared as the ships killed velocity and sank closer toward atmosphere's edge.

  "Foxfire Six, I have an observed ground launch. Predicted intersection ... uh, thirty-five seconds. Interception probability eighty-three percent. Beginning diversion...” signaled an observation and interdiction satellite.

  Foxfire Six's pilot cursed and slammed full power to the drive on his assault transport. He picked a random evasion pattern chip and fed it into the computer.

  Deep in the ship's guts, Sten crashed forward against the safety straps. His platoon sergeant slammed against the capsule wall. The ceiling rotated around Sten, swung up crazily, and then went away as the artificial gravity went dead.

  Sten and the other men in his platoon wedged themselves more tightly in the shock cocoons as gravity came and went in a dozen directions while the transport veered. The control room speaker crackled: “Four seconds until atmosphere. H minus thirty ... antimissile evasion tactics in progress."

  Pinpoint flames leaped from the O and I satellite as it launched a dozen intercepts down toward the six pencil lines of smoke curling up for the transport. Close to the black of space, pure light flashed. “Foxfire Six, I have a hit on one of your birds. Hit also tumbled gyros on second bird. Suggest you make diversionary launch."

  The transport's weapons officer dumped two batteries of gremlins to home on the upcoming missiles. The gremlins spewed chaff as they dropped.

  A missile fell for the ruse, and diverted onto a gremlin. The others, probably ground-guided, homed on the huge trooptransport.

  "Foxfire Six, intercept now ninety-nine percent. Suggest you launch troop caps."

  Inside Sten's capsule, the beeper went off, and a computer voice announced, “Capsule launch on short countdown. Surface impact one minute twelve seconds."

  The transport pilot hit the launch key and the craft seemed to explode. The huge cone separated from the ship's main body, then spewed twenty long capsules into space. The capsules went to automatic regime, and targeted on the robot homer already in place on the target zone.

  The grizzled corporal cocooned next to Sten said thoughtfully, “Guess they got us targeted. Six to five they'll take us out before we ground. Naw. Make that eight to five. Want a piece?"

  Sten shook his head, and the capsule rotated around him again.

  Forty-six seconds had passed since the invasion elements, Red One and Red Two, had dropped away from the fleet.

  The sky around the planet was blazing from nuke and conventional explosions.

  Two missiles proximity-detonated on troop capsules. Sten's capsule juddered. “In atmosphere,” the corporal said. An idiot-level radar in the capsule nose tsked and told the capsule's computer to kill speed. Huge wings snapped out from the capsule's sides, and nose rockets bellowed. The capsule's vertical dive shallowed as the wings’ leading edges went red then up into white. The air-howl was deafening inside the capsule.

  Nearly simultaneously, the capsule's computer dumped three tear-away parachutes out the tail, and pulsed rockets to turn the capsule's course away from the ocean, back on track with the TZ homer. The computer deployed two sets of divebrakes to burn away before the capsule was subsonic.Short-range ground/air missiles flashed up from the air defenses around the planet's capital below Sten's capsule. One-and two-man tacships skipped and skidded through the black blossoms, then tucked and went in.

  Laser sights targeted launch sites, and glidebombs dropped, locked in.

  The second wave of tacships swept across the city, scatterbombs cascading down. In the city's heart, a firestorm raged, solid steel and concrete flowing in rivers as the city melted.

  A terrain-following missile picked up Sten's incoming capsule, targeted and went to full boost, but lost the capsule in ground clutter. Unable to pull his bird out, the missile's officer manually detonated, hoping to do damage with a near miss.

  The capsule pancaked in, up a wide avenue. Touchdown!—and the Shockwave caught the capsule, one wing slamming against the street, and then the capsule pin-wheeled.

  Sten's eyes came open. Blackness. Then the minicharges blew and the capsule's bulkheads dropped away.

  The men cascaded out, onto the street.

  Sten stumbled, regained his
feet, and automatically knocked down his helmet's flare visor. He hit the breakaway harness on the willygun; magazine in; armed; Sten went down on one knee. Ten meters away from his nearest squadmate.

  Landing security perimeter complete. A bellow from the platoon sergeant: “First. Second squads. Maneuver. Third squad. Security. Weapons squad, set up over by that statue."

  "Come on. Diamond. Move it."

  Sten and his squaddies moved forward, hugging the side of the street. Sten's ears finally decided to return to life, and now he could hear the clatter of bootheels and the creak of his weapons harness.The first missile from the weapons squad's launchers shushed into the air, and swung, patrolling for a target. “Come on, you. You ain't got time for bird-watching. Keep your—"

  The squad went flat as rubble crashed. Sten rolled through a doorway and came back up.

  He ducked down, out of sight as the huge, gray-painted assault tank rumbled through a building and toward his squad.

  Sten fumbled a grenade from his belt, armed it, and overhanded the small ovoid toward the track. The grenade burst, meters short, and Sten dove for the deck as one of the tank's two main turrets swiveled toward him.

  His eardrums crawled and spine twisted as the tank's maser came up to firing pressure. The wall above him sharded as the soundwaves battered it into nothingness. Sten stayed down as the tank rumbled past.

  One tread chattered a meter away from him. Sten heard the long gurgling scream as someone—his team partner—was pulped under the three-meter-wide tracks.

  Sten rolled to his feet as the tank passed, caught the dangling end of the track's towing harness, and pulled himself clear of the ground, almost level with the rear, undipped another grenade and rolled it up between the turrets.

  He dropped away and thudded to the pavement. The tank rolled on a few meters, far enough for Sten to be out of the sensor's dead zone.

  An antipersonnel cupola spun toward him and the gun depressed, just as the grenade detonated. The blast ripped one main turret away. It cartwheeled through the air to squash two crouching guardsmen.

  Sten lay motionless twenty meters behind the tank. Flame spouted from the crater in its top, then was smothered by the extinguishers. The second main turret ground back. Its AP gun sputtered fire, and bullets chattered toward Sten. He screamedas a white-hot wire burned through his shoulder, but came to his feet and dove forward, sliding across the pavement, under the track.

  Pain. It hurts. Sten forced himself into the familiar aid mantra, and the nerve ending died, pain faded. His arm was useless. Sten awkwardly crawled from under the tank, then went flat as bullets spattered on the armor beside him.

  A column of enemy infantry was infiltrating forward, through the ruins. They opened fire as Sten went around the tank's side.

  The engine growled, and the tank rumbled forward. Sten edged along with it, keeping the tank between himself and the enemy troopers. He heard shouted commands, and bent down, peering through the track's idler wheels. He saw legs running toward the tank. Sten picked a bester grenade from its pouch and lobbed it over the tank. His flash visor blackened, covering the light explosion.

  The soldiers went down. Stunned, their time sense destroyed, they'd be out of action for at least half an hour. Gears crashed, and the tank ground down the avenue, toward Sten's platoon headquarters. Sten grabbed a cleat and awkwardly swung himself up onto the tank's skirts. The tank's remaining main turret was firing half-power charges down the avenue. The AP capsules were reconning by fire—spraying the buildings on either side of the track.

  Sten crawled across the tank, toward the turret. An eye flickered in an observation slit, and an AP gun swung toward him. Sten jumped onto the top of the tank's main turret. He blinked—

  Sten was sitting in a room, a gleaming steel helmet over his head, blocking his vision. Transmission tendrils curled from the helmet. But Sten was riding the top of a heavy tank, in life-or-death battle on a nameless world somewhere.

  Sten's fingernails ripped as the turret swung back and forth,trying to throw him off. A hatchway clicked, and Sten shot forward while pulling a combat knife from its boot sheath. He lunged toward the tankman coming out, pistol ready.

  The knife caught the man in the mouth. Blood gouted around Sten's hand. The man dropped back inside the tank. Sten levered the hatch completely open then jerked back as bullets rang up from the interior.

  Sten yanked off his equipment belt, thumbed into life a time-delay grenade on it, then dropped the whole belt down the hatch.

  He jumped. Landed, feeling tendons rip and tear, went to one knee, pushed away again, over a low ruined wall as behind him the tank blew; a world-destroying, all-consuming ball of flame boiled up from the tank over the wall, catching Sten. He felt his body crackle black around him and sear down and down into death.

  * * * *

  The recording switched off.

  Sten tore the helmet off his head and threw it across the room.

  A speaker keyed on.

  "You just participated in the first assault wave when your regiment, the Guard's First Assault, landed on Demeter. The regiment suffered sixty-four percent casualties during the three-week operation yet took all assigned objectives within the operations plan timetable.

  "To honor their achievement, the Guard's First Assault was granted, by the Eternal Emperor himself, the right to wear an Imperial fourragere in red, white, and green. The battle honors of Demeter were added to the division's colors.

  "In addition, many individual awards for heroism were made, including the Galactic Cross, posthumous, to Guardsman Jaime Shavala, whose experiences you were fortunate enough toparticipate in as part of this test.

  "There will be thirty minutes of free time before the evening meal is served. Testing will recommence tomorrow. That is all. You may leave the test chamber."

  Sten clambered out of the chair. Odd. He could still feel where that bullet had hit him. The door opened, and Sten headed for the messhall. So that's being a hero. And also that's becoming dead. Neither one of them held any attraction for Sten. Still, he thought to himself, thirty-six percent is a better survival rate than Exotic Section had. But he still wanted to know what valuable characteristics he could develop to qualify for Guard's First Assault Way Behind the Lines Slackers Detachment.

  He sat on the edge of a memorial to some forgotten battle and waited for the long line of prospective recruits to shorten up.

  Sten took a deep breath of nonmanufactured air and was mildly surprised to find himself feeling happy. He considered. Bet? That wasn't something he was over. Any more than he had recovered from the death of his family. He guessed, though, that that kind of thing got easier to deal with with practice. Practice, he suddenly realized, he might get a lot of in the Guard.

  Ah well. He stood and strolled toward the end of the line. At least he was off Vulcan. And he'd never have to go back. Although he did have dreams about what Vulcan would look like with a sticky planet buster detonated just above The Eye.

  Very deliberately he shut the idea off, and concentrated on being hungry.

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  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Rykor, too, was happy. Wild arctic seas boomed in her mind. Waves climbed toward the gray, overcast sky as glaciers calved huge bergs.

  She rolled as she surfaced, exultantly spouting, then crashed her flukes against the water, and leapt free from wave to wave inpowerful, graceful dives. There was a gentle tap on her shoulder.

  Rykor rolled one eye open and sourly looked up at Frazer, one of her assistants. “You want?” she rumbled.

  "There's a vid for you. From Prime World."

  Rykor whuffled through her whiskers and braced both arms on the sides of the tank. She levered her enormous bulk up and over into the gravchair. Folds of blubber slopped over the sides until the frantic chair tucked them all safely in place. She tapped controls, and the chair slid her across the chamber to the main screen. Frazer fussed beside her.

 
"It's in reference to that new Guards recruit. The one you put the personal key on."

  "Figures,” Rykor muttered. “Now I'll get more walrus jokes. Whatever a walrus is."

  The screen was blank, except for a single line of blinking letters. Rykor was mildly surprised, but touched the CIPHER button, and added the code line. She motioned Frazer away from the screen.

  It cleared, and Mahoney beamed out at her.

  "Thought I'd take a moment of your time, Rykor, and ask you to check on one of my lads."

  Rykor touched a button, and a second screen lit. “Sten?"

  "Now that'd be a good guess."

  "Guess? With your personal code added to the computer key?"

  "That's always been my problem. Never known for bein’ subtle."

  Rykor didn't bother with a retort. Too easy a target. “You want his scores?"

  "Now would I be bothering a chief psychologist if all I neededwas a clerk to recite to me? You know what I'd like."

  Rykor took a deep breath. “Overall, he should be what I've heard you call a ‘nest of snakes.'” Mahoney looked puzzled, but decided to let it pass. “Exceptionally high intelligence level, well integrated into temporal planning and personnel assessment.

  "Which does not compute. He should be either catatonic or a raving psychopath. Instead, he's far too sane. We can test more intensively, but I believe he's primarily functional because his experiences are unassimilated."

  "Explain."

  "Analysis—bringing these problems, and his unexpressed emotions into the open—would be suggested."

  "Suggested for what,” Mahoney said. “We're not building a poet. All I want is a soldier. Will he fall apart in training?"

  "Impossible to predict with any certainty. Personal feeling—probably not. He's already been stressed far beyond our limits."

  "What kind of soldier will he be?"

  "Execrable."

  Mahoney looked surprised.